30-Day Persistence Challenge: How persistence created MySpace.com

Now, I'll admit that MySpace completely missed me. I went from LiveJournal to Facebook and Twitter. But any startup (read: us) takes lots of different attempts to get it right before you hit on the magic combination of great idea, right time, right business approach and good marketing. During all that practice, you learn the best way to present yourself, you hone your business sense. For us, the way we do that is by experiencing the ups and downs of querying and writing. We learn that this approach works with this kind of editor, that that structure works with this particular kind of query. We learn how to follow up and to meet editors and generally how to be in business. The fact that some stories fail to catch on with the markets we imagine doesn't mean we're failing. It means we're learning.

Sure, I like to think that our businesses are more respectable than spam or Asian porn, but they're still businesses. Tell me what you think.